


Brew the Dead

by quantumvelvet



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: “The coffee,” Pent repeats, and there's a slight hitch to her voice as she shifts, jarring her broken arm, “is haunted.”
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Brew the Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morenewsfromnowhere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morenewsfromnowhere/gifts).



“The coffee is haunted.” The voice of Abigail Pent is calm, matter-of-fact, and not raised even a fraction of a decibel despite the maddened howling on the other side of the firmly barricaded cafeteria door. Were it not for the pinched, taut quality of the corners of her eyes and mouth and the arm she holds tucked close enough to her chest that it almost obscures the unnatural bend to her radius and ulna, it could almost be imagined that she sits in the middle of a lecture hall or scholarly meeting, and not in a dull metal hallway painted in stinking fluids, with a howling horde of madmen on the other side of the door and her husband unconscious and in the process of being bound a scant two metres away.

Were Harrow a flesh magician, attuned to the complex cascade of chemicals that make up the main part of baseline human response, or else were she a veteran of the Cohort forged in conflict more immediate and visceral than training matches, she might recognize the leading edge of shock blunting the older woman's affect. Harrow is neither of these things. She is a bone magician, and a green recruit only a few scant weeks out of training, and so the Fifth's calm makes her someone to – grudgingly, privately, and never, ever out loud – respect.

It also, apparently, makes her difficult to hear under the maddened din. The girl crouched with her knee planted in the middle of Magnus's back while she finishes securing his hands behind his back so that he can't use them to hurt himself or anyone else when he inevitably howls awake again glances over, with a slight toss of her head to shift a stray tumble of red hair out of her eyes. “What?” she asks loudly, the question punctuated by a thump from the other side of the door, loud enough to sound as though it should be accompanied by the bowing and buckling of said door. It isn't, of course – the ship is made of sturdier stuff than can be easily buckled by the force of something so fragile as human meat – but Harrow has no doubt that whichever fool had attempted to use their body as a battering ram is bowed and bent at the very least.

“The coffee,” Pent repeats, and there's a slight hitch to her voice as she shifts, jarring her broken arm, “is haunted.”

“What,” the red-haired officer says again – Nav, Harrow names her in her own mind, and pretends very hard that she had to reach for that name, because it most certainly does not float to the top of her thoughts at inconvenient moments – and follows up with, “the fuck? I know the brass gets up to some weird shit when no one's looking, but haunted coffee? Why?”

“To break the back of our forces,” Harrow replies, with a quick, sharp jerk of her chin towards the cafeteria doors. “The Cohort views coffee as nearly as vital as thanergy. Anything that tampers with the coffee will tamper with most of our forces. The question isn't why, it's how? How did anyone manage to summon enough shades to possess that many people?”

The hallway is not silent, but there's a moment without any coherent speech. Nav finishes securing the Fifth cavalier, and pulls away, scuttling still crouched to join the two necromancers, as though worried that their impromptu conference might be suddenly interrupted by something airborne. Which would not, in fact, be the strangest thing to happen this morning, and may be a reasonable precaution.

“They didn't,” the Fifth necromancer says finally, her gaze snapping back into focus from some middle distance. Harrow holds not even a fraction of an atom of envy for the dreadfully ephemeral talents of a spirit magician, but she can't quite help wondering what the woman might have been seeing. “There might be five ghosts in there, if they were whole. Fragmented as they are, the possessions won't last long, but they're maddened enough to do a great deal of damage while they do last.”

“The question remains how.” Harrow worries at her lower lip, teeth tearing free a small flake of dried skin. It stings for an instant, and there is another violent thump from the other side of the door, as though the horde beyond can smell the minute welling of blood. Which is preposterous, but no more so than anything else this morning has chosen to be. “We're in space. Five or fifty, it should be impossible to summon spirits here.”

“There must have been grave dirt mixed with the grounds.” Pent's brow furrows slightly in thought. “And traces of summoning components, there or in the additives. If the ghosts were already bound in such a way that breaking down the focus of their binding rendered them into component parts rather than snapping the binding, they would have gained a foothold over time, enough to overcome the will of anyone not accustomed to warding themselves against spiritual mischief.”

“Ugh,” Nav says, eloquently. “I've been feeding people corpse juice.” She glances sidelong at Harrow. “Guess it's a good thing you never actually drink your coffee, Your Grand Desolation.”

Harrow most assuredly does not flush at that.

Pent nods once. “She doesn't drink it, and I prefer tea. That explains why we haven't been assailed.” She gives Nav a look, openly questioning.

Nav shrugs one shoulder dismissively. “I'm too hot to be possessed.”

Harrow makes a low, disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “Now that we've decided what must have happened, we should stop it. The rank and file might be more efficient if they batter themselves to death against the walls and can be raised as proper skeletons, but I doubt we're lucky enough that everyone is confined to the cafeteria. Lady Pent, your House specializes in spirit magic. Could you banish the spectres?”

“Easily,” Pent replies. “If I had a sample of the grounds and the components.”

Nav hooks a thumb over her shoulder at Magnus. “Isn't he full of the stuff?”

As though on cue, the Fifth cavalier thrashes awake, bellowing and squirming in his bonds.

“Not in sufficient quantities,” Pent replies. “Even were I willing to bleed him dry, and I'm most assuredly not, the components in his bloodstream are neither pure enough nor present in sufficient amount to undo the entire working. I'd need at least half a cup of the grounds, and one of each of the additive vials.”

“Which are in the store-room. Through them.” Nav rolls her shoulders, twists her neck to crack it, and springs to her feet, teeth bared in something between a grimace and a grin – and the glint in her golden eyes puts it closer to the latter than anyone could find remotely sane.

“As ridiculous as that notion is,” Harrow says, voice dripping with contempt, “we would be better served by going over them.”

Nav follows her gaze up the wall towards the air vent, and snorts. “Even you wouldn't fit in there.”

Harrow reaches up to pull the bone studs from her ears, the packet of grave dirt held against her sternum crinkling reassuringly. “I don't need to. Now make yourself useful and pry the grate out.”

Pent gives her a concerned look, shoulders stiffening as her husband roars again, followed by a series of strange, choking cackles. “Are you sure--”

“I've been raising skeletons since before I could walk. If some second-rate spirit magician can possess an entire platoon with grave dirt and coffee, I can manage this.”

And she can, but barely. It feels as though the moisture is being drained from her eyeballs, the marrow sucked from her bones and replaced with a swarm of small, angry wasps that have been doused in spacecraft fuel and set alight. Her breathing turns ragged, wheezing and rattling in her chest like some great hand is compressing her lungs. The results of her efforts are strange, stunted things, crude wheels of multi-jointed digits that scuttle up the wall and into the vent Nav has pried loose like alien spiders, the click of their phalanges in time with Magnus's continued choking cackles.

Harrow slumps bonelessly against the wall as she awaits her servants return, and counts it as a victory when the stars exploding behind her eyelids slowly recede, though they leave the hall washed in a strange, murky red. Some of the vessels in her eyes must have ruptured.

Beside her, Pent laboriously lays out a circle one-handed, with chalk and candles produced from the satchel she carries at her side, the privilege of being a consultant rather than a member of the cohort proper. By the time the scuttling constructs return, one weaving drunkenly under the weight of a rack of vials, the lines of her working are in place. She does...something with the vials, and the details are lost in the bloody fog over Harrow's eyes, or else in the gaps of her attention. Her voice rises in a chant – and the howls behind the door redouble, bodies thudding against the door and the walls like some horrible thunder. Magnus thrashes harder in his bonds, slamming against the wall like some mindless beast caught in a trap, desperate to be free even if it means gnawing off a limb. Nav swears and throws herself on top of him to keep him from breaking anything in his frenzy – then swears again, jerking back, and the dampness spreading along her shoulder is all but invisible in all the red.

The howls rise to a crescendo, drowning out even the furious beating of Harrow's heart. There's a strange, thin snapping sensation, and her mouth floods with the taste of blood, and she feels rather than hears her constructs buckle and crumble, sifting apart to so much useless ash. The air tinges pink in the corner of her vision where Pent is working, like the glow of a chemical fire. Something dark seeps from beneath the door.

And then – silence, so profound as to be almost painful, but lasting only a few heartbeats. She hears a thud as the Fifth necromancer slumps to her knees. There is rustling behind the door, and a sob. A man's voice, muffled as though someone had hastily shoved a bar cloth in his mouth to keep him from biting again says, “Ow,” then, “whuf?”

Harrow lets her head thud back against the wall, and closes her eyes.

“Haunted coffee,” Nav says. “What. The. Fuck.”


End file.
